Looking for some Back-to-School specials? Boy, do I have some scholarly tomes and literary treasures for you!
Then again... no, I don’t. It’s still officially summer, and until there are more substantial changes in the calendar and the weather our main focus should be in squeezing in as much unrequired summer and beach reading as possible.
Take nonfiction. Please. We’re still in the seasonal doldrums as far as the quantity of new releases are concerned - and as far as compelling topics, I guess that depends on how you feel about the snooze-ability of books about American and Soviet women military pilots, the biographical history of mathematics, and even Katie Couric. Zzz...
For a refreshing change of page, however, Pattie Boyd, in her highly intriguing autobiography Wonderful Tonight, breaks a 40-year silence to tell about her fascinating life as a swingin’-’60s London model in the midst of the Beatles’ inner circle, who went on to marry both George Harrison and Eric Clapton.
In the world of fiction, there’s still enough in the way of upcoming last-minute reads for your inner escapist. Go back in time with Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade as Diana Gabaldon fuses together elements of her popular character’s secret and public lives – a family mystery, a risky love affair, and a war that extends from the Old World to the New. Like a member of some kind of mod morgue squad, Temperance Brennan in Kathy Reichs' tenth forensic thriller, Bones to Ashes, has a new workload that involves an unidentified skeleton from Québec's cold case unit that just might be her childhood friend who had disappeared at age 15. Beach book suspense ensues...
For a promising summer-in-the-suburbs tale, The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston centers around four bored teenage boys whose random acts of minor troublemaking bring them unwanted attention from major criminal elements, unleashing the dark and long-buried past of their town and their families.
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